Jack Dempsey Automata

**rockpaperscissor** · #1 08-09-2013, 10:58 AM

Thanks to altomentis (Christine), I have the opportunity to build this vintage newspaper cutout from the '20s. This is special to me. My grandfather was born in 1900, and was always a great boxing fan. We used to watch the Friday night fights together back in the late '60s early '70s. In my father's collection of old snapshots, there are several photos of a road trip that my grandfather went on sometime around 1919-1921. He and a few buddies went on a cross country camping trip in a model T ford. Must have been quite an adventure considering the lack of paved roads, and the dependability of the vehicle. The car was so loaded down with equipment, it resembled the Beverly Hillbillies T, LOL. Anyway, one of the places they visited was Sequoia National Park. I'm sure of this because one of the photos is of the car passing though a hole cut thru a huge Sequoia. Anyway, I think Jack Dempsey may have had a training camp set up thereabouts, because one of the pictures is of my grandfather and him. I probably wouldn't have recognized him right away, but on the back in pencil is written "me and Jack Dempsey". Pretty cool, right?

So, rather than coloring the black and white image with crayons like they would have back then, I used Photoshop, and am very happy with the way it turned out. The pieces are glued to a piece of matt board, and are drying now, but I'll have pics up soon.

**Vermin_King** · #2 08-09-2013, 11:20 AM

I for one am anxiously awaiting

**rockpaperscissor** · #3 08-09-2013, 12:23 PM

Well, it turns out that matt board is too thick, so I printed up another copy and glued it to 0.5mm cardboard. This should work much better. The colors are muted in the photos, but you'll get the idea - it looks much better in person. I colored his one piece in green. Although born in America, his ancestry was Irish, so I thought Kelly green would be fitting. His championship belt has a gold buckle, and a red, white and blue sash. It's actually a pretty good likeness of Dempsey, and the detail in the artwork is great: magnified, the buckle depicts a couple of boxers in action.

Stay tuned, fight fans. Round 1 is over, but there's plenty more to come.

**charleswlkr54** · #4 08-09-2013, 02:27 PM

That tree, unfortunately, fell during the winter quite a few years ago, having that road running right through it didn't do it any good!

**rockpaperscissor** · #5 08-10-2013, 12:25 PM

The champ is finished. The model only took a couple of hours to build, and for me, that's really fast. Despite the recoloring, I decided to leave the straight line printing defects that were on the original black and white model. I thought the flaws gave it a more vintage look. Laminating the parts to 0.5mm cardboard worked out pretty well, but the animation is a bit stiff. I think posterboard would have been the ideal material to back the pieces with. After cutting out all the parts, I colored the edges with a black sharpie for a more finished look. The nameplate/base bends forward, but Jack had a tendency to fall backwards like he had just been walloped with a haymaker. To remedy this, I glued a couple of tall triangular support pieces to the back of this legs. Now he's a solid as a rock. That's about all there is to tell. Enjoy the pics.

**eatcrow2** · #6 08-10-2013, 02:17 PM

A knockout of a model nicely done!!

**altomentis** · #7 08-11-2013, 11:25 PM

Great job, Don!

I am so happy to see someone enjoying these. They are pretty simple and the movement quality varies a lot.

In some newspapers they were published in color, in others black and white. The Jack Dempsey is one that I found that was not included in the ones posted by Barnacle Press.

I recently purchased 3 originals in color and will scan them when I get a chance.

I am showing a picture of one in color, courtesy of the Strong Museum of Play.

Regards, Christine

**rockpaperscissor** · #8 08-12-2013, 05:54 AM

Many thanks for your comments, ec2 and Christine. This model was a lot of fun to recolor and build, and I may do others. I've gotten the OK from Christine to make the Dempsey recolor available for download here on the forum. If anyone has an interest, it should become available within a couple of days, so keep an eye out.

**SCEtoAUX** · #9 08-12-2013, 06:07 AM

The Jack Dempsey looks good.
Here are a couple of short videos of two of the automata I hand colored a few years ago that came from the Barnacle Press site.

Oscar the Owl

The Old Pump

**altomentis** · #10 08-15-2013, 02:37 PM

I have managed to track down 72 of these moving toys by Dan Rudolph, most of them in 2 or three versions of varying quality. Barnacle Press published 26 of them. I have 39 of them in my Flickr Set. I still have 33 of them to clean up and will get to them as quickly as work and other things allow.

Please feel free to recolor and share any of the ones I've posted.
I hope to someday be able to do my own recolors and perhaps improve the action on some of the ones that don't work as well as they might while still preserving the vintage quality.

Regards, Christine